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Vowel-Consonant Harmony in Uyghur

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Vowel-consonant harmony in Uyghur Laura Becker 1 Introduction The present paper addresses a typologically rare pattern of harmonic vowel-consonant interactions in Uyghur, an Eastern Turkic language spoken in China (Engesæth et al. 2010: 5). In addition to the commonly attested backness harmony in vowels, velar and uvular consonants in Uyghur participate in harmony, resulting in three types of harmonic processes: (i) vowel-vowel, (ii) consonant-consonant, and (iii) vowel-consonant interactions.1 The three harmony types, which will be addressed in more detail in section 2, are illustrated below. Note that harmony between consonants is attested only when the harmony neutral vowels /i/ and/or /e/ are present, as in (2): (1) Backness harmony between vowels (2) Backness harmony between consonants a. søz-lEr ‘word-PL’ (SU 48) a. kim-lik ‘identity’ (CIC 8) b. tSatS-lar ‘hair-PL’ (SU 48) b. qijintSi-liq ‘difficulty’ (GPC 10) (3) Backness harmony between vowels and consonants a. jygyr-mEk ‘running’ (GTB 301) b. jaz-maq ‘writing’ (GTB 310) Pattillo (2013) addresses the consonant alternation in more detail and discusses the possibility of con- sonant harmony in Uyghur. The author concludes that the Uyghur pattern does not feature consonant harmony for alternating consonants being adjacent to vowels participating in backness harmony. How- ever, considering neutral vowels and roots with vowels and/or consonants of different backness specifi- cation shows that there are two distinct but interacting harmony processes in the language. This will be discussed in section 2.4; for convenience, the three main points of the interaction are summarized here: (i) Affix vowels agree with the last harmonic root vowel in backness; (ii) harmonizing consonants agree with the closest harmonic/harmonizing segment which can be either a vowel or a consonant; (iii) if both a consonant and a vowel are adjacent segments to a harmonizing consonant, the latter agrees with the consonant. This phenomenon is less common cross-linguistically for three reasons. Firstly, long-distance har- mony processes between consonants and vowels are much rarer than local harmonic interactions (Rose & Walker 2011: 249). Secondly, reported alternations between velar and uvular consonants that interact with vowels involve the feature [±high], so that velars co-occur with [+high] vowels, whereas uvulars pattern with [–high] ones, as in, e.g. Sibe (Tungusic) (Rose & Walker 2011: 250), and Mongolic (Svantes- son et al. 2005: 28; Beltzung et al. 2015: 230). Similar assimilations are attested in Misantla Totonac and Tepehua, where a high vowel is lowered in the context of uvulars (Hansson 2001: 70,73). In Uyghur, however, it is rather the feature [±back] that distinguishes between velars and uvulars and makes them co- occur with [–back] and [+back] vowels, respectively, whereas high vowels and uvulars are not restricted in their co-occurrence. Thirdly, Ní Chiosáin & Padgett (1993) and Padgett (2011) discuss cross-category interactions between vowels and consonants and note that consonant-to-vowel assimilations, in contrast 1A similar, though not identical, phenomenon is also attested in other Eastern Turkic languages: velar and uvular consonants occur adjacent to front and back vowels, respectively. In Turkmen, Tatar, or Bashkir, this is found on the phonetic level only. In Uyghur, on the other hand, velar and uvular consonants are not allophones but distinct phonemes, which take part in backness harmony. 1 to vowel-to-consonant assimilations, seem to be unattested, palatalizing mutations being "the only clear exception" (Padgett 2011: 1766). The Uyghur pattern could be another potential counter-example to this generalization, since consonant harmony depends on vowel harmony, but not vice versa. Section 3 of the present paper proposes an Agreement by Correspondence approach to model the three types of harmonic interaction. ABC establishes correspondence relations between segments based on their similarity and imposes ID-constraints onto outputs of the corresponding segments, which results in the harmony pattern observed. As for the phenomenon in Uyghur, similarity requires segments to be [dorsal], which makes them agree in their feature specification for [±back]. ABC as theoretical framework has been chosen, since it deals with this kind of parasitic harmony in a very straight-forward way, i.e. all [dorsal] segments enter the correspondence relation, the harmonic feature being [±back]. In addition, the latter will be shown to be sensitive to contrast in order to ac- count for the distribution of neutral segments that are [dorsal]. By doing so, there is no need to assume underspecification. ABC having been developed to model consonant harmony driven by similarity (Rose & Walker 2004; Hansson 2001), it could also be applied to vowel harmony (Krämer 2003; Rhodes 2012) and consonant dissimilation processes (Bennett 2013). The present paper will show another type of application of the ABC framework, namely long-distance consonant-vowel interactions. 2 Data This section gives an overview of the phoneme inventory of Uyghur, the basic functioning of backness harmony, and illustrates the distribution of velar and uvular consonants within roots and affixes. Finally, the relevant root types are introduced. 2.1 Uyghur phoneme inventory In Uyghur, all high, mid, and low vowels can be divided into [±back] and [±round]. The vowel inven- tory, however, is not symmetric: the two [–back], unrounded vowels /i/ and /e/ do not have a [+back] counterpart. This can account for their neutral2 behaviour (see section 3.3). –back +back –rd +rd –rd +rd +high /i/ /y/ /u/ –high–low /e/ /ø/ /o/ +low /E/ /a/ Table 1: The vowel inventory of Uyghur (Hahn 1991b; Comrie 1997). The consonant inventory is given in table 2 below. For the purpose of the present paper, especially the velar and palatal stops will be relevant, since these are the consonants participating in backness harmony. 2Uyghur features phonological processes that derive /i/ from /a/ and /E/ in non-initial open syllables and /e/ from the same vowels in short initial syllables of a word with /i/ in the following syllable. Those derived vowels are not neutral in all cases. This will not be of concern in the present paper, for a detailed account these two processes see Vaux (2000) or Hahn (1991b: 51). 2 labial alveo-dental alveo-palatal velar uvular laryngeal stops /p/ /b/ /t/ /d/ /k/ /g/ /q/ /å/ P affricates /ts/ /tS/ /dZ/ fricatives /f/ /v/ /s/ /z/ /S//Z//X/ /h/ nasals /m/ /n/ /N/ liquids /l/ /r/ glides /w/ /j/ Table 2: The consonant inventory of Uyghur (Hahn 1991b: 59). Only the velars and uvulars shaded in the table above participate in harmony; /N/ and /X/ do not participate (see section 3.3 on neutral segments). 2.2 Backness harmony of vowels Similar to most other Turkic languages, Uyghur has backness harmony, i.e. any suffix vowel must agree with the vowel of the preceding morpheme in backness until a word boundary is encountered (Hahn 1991b: 46). However, two other processes seem to blur harmony: vowel raising and umlauting. Raising derives /i/ from /a/ and /E/ in non-initial open syllables and umlauting results in /e/ from underlying /i/ or /E/ in short initial syllables of a word with /i/ in the following syllable (Vaux 2000). Also the vowels /i/ and /e/ being transparent, the number of participating vowels is reduced in Uyghur, compared to, e.g. Turkish. Nevertheless, all suffixes that feature harmonizing vowels participate in harmony and surface with the respective vowel selected according to the harmonic properties of the root.3 The following examples show the harmonic restrictions on affix vowels. As can be seen in the basic examples in (4) and (5), roots with [αback] vowels trigger [αback] vowels in affixes: (4) The plural suffix -lar bEl-lEr ‘waist-PL’ (SU 48)4 tSatS-lar ‘hair-PL’ (SU 48) kyn-lEr ‘day-PL’ (SU 48) toj-lar ‘feast-PL’ (SU 48) søz-lEr ‘word-PL’ (SU 48) quS-lar ‘bird-PL’ (SU 48) (5) The negative suffix -ma kEt-mE- ‘go-NEG’ (SU 48) qat-ma- ‘harden-NEG’ (SU 48) kyt-mE- ‘wait-NEG’ (SU 48) qoj-ma- ‘put-NEG’ (SU 48) køj-mE- ‘singe-NEG’ (SU 48) qur-ma- ‘dry-NEG’ (SU 48) In addition, most native roots are harmonic, i.e. all vowels are specified for [±back]. Nevertheless, vowels of different backness specification are tolerated within roots, mostly occurring in loan words. In case roots feature vowels of different backness specifications, the surface form of the harmonizing suffix vowel(s) is determined by the harmonic vowel that is closest to it: 3Uyghur additionally exhibits labial harmony with non-low vowels. Since this is not relevant for the discussion of the present paper, it will not be addressed in the following sections. For a description of labial harmony in Uyghur, see Hahn (1991b), Comrie (1997) or De Jong (2007). 4SU refers to Hahn (1991b). 3 (6) V-inconsistent roots saPEt-lEr ‘hour-PL’ (GTB 6)5 universitet-lar ‘university-PL’ (GTB 6) adEm-lEr ‘man-PL’ (WP 61) As has already been mentioned, the vowels /e/ and /i/ are neutral to harmony due to their lack of a harmonic partner (/I/ and /7/, respectively) specified for [±back]. Both vowels are transparent, i.e. both can co-occur with other front and back vowels in the root and neither of them participates in backness harmony: (7) /i/ and /e/ with [–back] vowels (8) /i/ and /e/ with [+back] vowels nErsi-lEr ‘thing-PL’ (WP 15) jelindZa-S-qa ‘burn-GER-DAT’ (WP 483) kerEklik ‘need’ (CRA 6) qiz-lar ‘girl-PL’ (GTB 153) Since the vowel /e/ only surfaces in native words due to umlauting (cf. Hahn (1991b: 51)), there are no suffixes that contain /e/. The vowel /i/ on the other hand, occurs in affixes with both front and back roots.
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